Homemade Laundry Soap with Essential Oils

This is one of my favourite DIY recipes mostly because it drives me insane having to pay a shit-ton of money for laundry soap. This homemade laundry soap is cheap, easy to make, and works just as well if not better than anything you’ll pull off a store shelf.

A few years ago I was at my limit. One of my children was wetting the bed and nothing I bought would take out the smell. Thankfully I stumbled upon a post for homemade laundry soap that claimed it could help me. Ya know, it worked and I’ve been using it ever since. It’s been so long I don’t remember where I found the recipe, but thankfully it’s so easy I was able to commit it to memory.

Are you ready? This is going to save you some serious cash.

Homemade Laundry Soap

Ingredients/Supplies

One Bar of Soap.

You can use anything you have….Ivory, Dove, those little hotel soaps, really anything that doesn’t have a lot of perfumes in it will do.

One cup of Borax

One cup of Washing Soda

You can find Borax and Washing Soda in the same aisle as the laundry detergent. Washing Soda can be hard to find but I’ve had luck finding it at Safeway. It is NOT the same thing as Baking Soda. You need Washing Soda.

Water

25-30 Drops of Essential Oils (optional)(I use doTERRA’s Purify for the cleansing properties)

Container that holds 8L of water (I use an old 7kg kitty litter pail)

Instructions

Fill a large pot full of water and set to boil (approx 4L)

Grate one bar of soap into the water and stir until it dissolves

Turn heat to low

If you keep your heat too high it may boil over in the next steps and that’s a horrible mess to clean up. I’m speaking from experience here.

Add one cup of Washing Soda and stir until it dissolves

Add one cup of Borax and stir until it dissolves

Add approx 2L of cold water into your container

I do this so I’m not dumping hot water into an empty bucket.

Dump your pot of laundry soap into the container with water

Top off with cold water

Stir

Add 25-30 drops of your essential oil of choice.

I use doTERRA’s Purify because I love the clean scent, but you can use Lavender, Balance, Citrus Bliss, really anything pleasing to you.

Let this sit overnight. Once it’s cooled it will congeal into a gel like state. Just mix it up and you’re ready to go.

1/2 cup per load of laundry will have your clothes super clean and fresh.

Here is the final product. I know, it’s not a super fancy container, but I couldn’t care less what it looks like, it works well. You want to make sure you have enough room to get in there and stir it up again once it congeals. My first batch I put into old laundry soap jugs and once it gelled up I couldn’t get it out! Lesson learned.

This should last my family of 4 around 4-5 months. And it probably cost me less than $3.00 to make.

And that’s it. Cheap, Easy and Effective Homemade Laundry Soap using Essential Oils. If you don’t have any essential oils, but would like to give them a shot, give me a holler, or check out this post to find out the best way to order them.